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FBI Releases Secret Subpoena Information
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Apr 29, 2006 03:39 PM
from the not-looking-good-there dept.
from the not-looking-good-there dept.
gollum123 writes to mention a CNN article, reporting on an FBI information release. The number of secret subpoenas the Bureau filed last year reached 3,501. These documents allowed access to credit card records, bank statements, telephone records, and internet access logs for thousands of legal citizens without asking for a court's permission. From the article: "The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the same panel that signs off on applications for business records warrants, also approved 2,072 special warrants last year for secret wiretaps and searches of suspected terrorists and spies. The record number is more than twice as many as were issued in 2000, the last full year before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001."
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EFF Sues AT&T Over NSA Wiretapping 746 comments
Omega1045 writes "Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing is reporting that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has just filed a lawsuit against AT&T for helping the National Security Agency execute illegal warrant-less wiretaps against American citizens.
From the article: 'The lawsuits alleges that AT&T Corp. has opened its key telecommunications facilities and databases to direct access by the NSA and/or other government agencies, thereby disclosing to the government the contents of its customers' communications as well as detailed communications records about millions of its customers, including the lawsuit's class members.'"
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This is insane. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
No; the problem is that when we give up our basic freedoms to catch criminals trying to take away our freedoms, the criminals get what they want. There are plenty of legal criminal-justice procedures that can catch the bad guys without making the United States into a police state.
You cannot have it both ways.
According to whom? Since when did the choice become "give up your freedoms to us or give up your lives to them"? And need I quote Mr. Benjamin Franklin to say that anyone who makes such a demand deserves neither freedom nor security?
People are worried that some government agency is going after bank records and phone records convienently ignore the fact that businesses do it all the time and legally.
Business = private organization with voluntary membership. Government = public organization with compulsory membership. If you can't tell the difference, then go back to high school civics.
The government actually has to get permission from the courts. That is our protection.
Not according to the PATRIOT Act.
Yeah mistakes are going to be made, some people who have no guilt are going to have their records examined. Thats a small price to pay to at least try and stop another 9-11 from occuring. Yeah I know, its the right wings mantra, hide behind the fear of another 9-11. Too bad its a valid point. It sucks but there are far more loonies out there looking to deprive us of our freedom and lives than there are government workers trying to take your rights.
No, it's not a valid point. It's a demonstration of the logical fallacy of appeal to emotion, much like the "do you want the 'smoking gun' to be a mushroom cloud over Manhattan?" defense of the Iraq war.
As for your second assertion, I'm willing to bet that the government is MUCH better equipped to take away our rights than "the terrorists." The terrorists have a handful of nuts with shoe-bombs and AK-47's. The government has an army numbering in the hundreds of thousands, which, while not directly for the idea of taking away your rights, must follow the commands of the few people who *are* interested in doing so.
You freely give up your privacy to any number of corporations, publish your thoughts out in the open on the net, and yet when the government follows the laws established to insure that it operates in the intrest of you and others you cry about it?
Once again. Business and internet = voluntary. Government = compulsory.
Also, if you are so naive as to believe that every law out there is to "insure (sic) that [the government] operates in the intrest (sic) of you and others," then I can only laugh.
Give me liberty or give me death (Score:3, Insightful)
—Patrick Henry
There was a time when some
not very... (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference... (Score:2)
Re:The difference... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The difference... (Score:3, Informative)
In the US, the constitution is ostensibly the final word. It is high
Re:The difference... (Score:3, Informative)
This is the same "final word" that has been changed 27 times over the course of its life? 27 times in 219 years - I make that one change every 8 years*. Yeah, that's s
Re:The difference... (Score:2)
Re:The difference... (Score:2, Funny)
Whatever happened to the good old days with Hoover (Score:2)
Re:Whatever happened to the good old days with Hoo (Score:2, Insightful)
Just thought I'd let you know that.
Tom
Re:Whatever happened to the good old days with Hoo (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think t
Rolling Stone said it best... (Score:5, Insightful)
From time to time, after hours, I kick back with my colleagues at Princeton to argue idly about which president really was the worst of them all. For years, these perennial debates have largely focused on the same handful of chief executives whom national polls of historians, from across the ideological and political spectrum, routinely cite as the bottom of the presidential barrel. Was the lousiest James Buchanan, who, confronted with Southern secession in 1860, dithered to a degree that, as his most recent biographer has said, probably amounted to disloyalty -- and who handed to his successor, Abraham Lincoln, a nation already torn asunder? Was it Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, who actively sided with former Confederates and undermined Reconstruction? What about the amiably incompetent Warren G. Harding, whose administration was fabulously corrupt? Or, though he has his defenders, Herbert Hoover, who tried some reforms but remained imprisoned in his own outmoded individualist ethic and collapsed under the weight of the stock-market crash of 1929 and the Depression's onset? The younger historians always put in a word for Richard M. Nixon, the only American president forced to resign from office.
Now, though, George W. Bush is in serious contention for the title of worst ever. In early 2004, an informal survey of 415 historians conducted by the nonpartisan History News Network found that eighty-one percent considered the Bush administration a "failure." Among those who called Bush a success, many gave the president high marks only for his ability to mobilize public support and get Congress to go along with what one historian called the administration's "pursuit of disastrous policies." In fact, roughly one in ten of those who called Bush a success was being facetious, rating him only as the best president since Bill Clinton -- a category in which Bush is the only contestant.
The lopsided decision of historians should give everyone pause. Contrary to popular stereotypes, historians are generally a cautious bunch. We assess the past from widely divergent points of view and are deeply concerned about being viewed as fair and accurate by our colleagues. When we make historical judgments, we are acting not as voters or even pundits, but as scholars who must evaluate all the evidence, good, bad or indifferent. Separate surveys, conducted by those perceived as conservatives as well as liberals, show remarkable unanimity about who the best and worst presidents have been.
Historians do tend, as a group, to be far more liberal than the citizenry as a whole -- a fact the president's admirers have seized on to dismiss the poll results as transparently biased. One pro-Bush historian said the survey revealed more about "the current crop of history professors" than about Bush or about Bush's eventual standing. But if historians were simply motivated by a strong collective liberal bias, they might be expected to call Bush the worst president since his father, or Ronald Reagan, or Nixon. Instead, more than half of those polled -- and nearly three-fourths of those who gave Bush a negative rating -- reached back before Nixon to find a president they considered as miserable as Bush. The presidents most commonly linked with Bush included Hoover, Andrew Johnson and Buchanan. Twelve percent of the historians polled -- nearly as many as those who rated Bush a success -- flatly called Bush the worst president in American history. And these figures were gathered before the debacles over Hurricane Katrina, B
One of America's Leading Historians said (Score:3, Informative)
Link : One of America's leading historians assesses George W. Bush [rollingstone.com]
Re:Rolling Stone said it best... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Rolling Stone said it best... (Score:2)
Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow! I bet they have a lot of terrorists to show for all that work. Right...?
::crickets chirping::
-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
Re:Wow! (Score:3, Informative)
You mean like these recent convictions, arrests, or indictments? Hamid Hayat [sacbee.com], Abu Ali [washingtontimes.com], and Sayed Ahmed [11alive.com], Shahawar Matin Siraj, [foxnews.com] Ehsanul Islam Sadequee [forbes.com], and these 19 [fbi.gov]?
Maybe your memor
Re:Wow! (Score:4, Interesting)
So, by my math, thats ~1.3 people killed per "attack". To put that in perspective, Americans have murdered each other the past few years at this rate:
2000 - 15,586 murders
2001 - 16,037 murders
2002 - 16,229 murders
2003 - 16,528 murders
2004 - 16,137 murders
But the average number of people killed was probably closer to 1.0, so that could not be an "attack" or terrorism.
So, the moral of the story is that living in the US is more dangerous than all of the terrorism in the world.
I wonder (Score:2, Funny)
Do they secretly subpoena slashdot posts? Maybe it's the Feds that keep modding me down...
credit card history (Score:5, Funny)
I kept trying to get the attention of some of those girls, but none of them so much as returned my glances. So I struck up a conversation with the friendly guy next to me.
Turns out the girls were ignoring me because it was a gay bar!
Now, if someone looks through my credit card history, they're going to think I'm into men.
So all I can say is, these secret warrants suck! And if you're FBI and monitoring my internet use and credit card history--I'm not gay! Really! I just hope your software is good enough to corelate this post with that Visa log.
Re:credit card history (Score:5, Funny)
Not that there's anything wrong with it...
Re:credit card history (Score:5, Informative)
Having said that, I suspect that visiting a single gay bar probably would not flag him as a closet homosexual. After all, who hasn't been to the odd gay bar or two? If he visited the same gay bar every week or two though, then that might raise some red flags (assuming that the NSA has a database of all drinking establishments with a 'sexual orientation of majority of patrons' field. If they do, then they could probably make a fair amount selling it in guidebook form...)
Close call (Score:5, Funny)
we started to notice . . . a few rainbows posted around the place
I'm sure you know by now to only go into bars that have a leather motif if you want to avoid gay bars.
And that's just the legal ones ! (Score:4, Insightful)
Republicans bring us smaller Government (Score:2)
So much for that whole limited government thing.
Instead of Clinton using the FBI to investigate his political enemies, we now have the FBI investigating 3000 people without court approval or even accountability (until they're pressured).
Exactly how doe
Re:Republicans bring us smaller Government (Score:3, Interesting)
What are we getting in return? (Score:3, Interesting)
Judging by the war in Iraq, bungled response to Katrina, the military wholesale spying on US citizens, the Justice Dept. all but admitting AT&T is helping them monitor communications in America, bankrupting the budget and the endless lies how are we supposed to trust that the government is doing the right thing? Just because Gonzales says this conduct is constitutional doesn't make it so.
I think it's pretty safe to assume this expansion of police powers does not make us any safer. It's a waste of resources, it's intrusive, and further undermines the pitiful remnants of our civil rights. Another failed policy from a failed administration. If it wasn't so dangerous and being wielded by corrupt, incompetent people it would be laughable.
o.b. simpsons (Score:3, Funny)
Homer: Well, there's not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol is sure doing its job.
Lisa: That's specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, sweetie.
Lisa: Dad, what if I were to tell you that this r
I call BS (Score:3, Funny)
-Robert Heinlein
I have to admit, I was torn myself, until last year. The response to Katrina pretty much proved that the current administration isn't nearly cunning enough to t
Heartwarming none the less ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Expecting the neo-con mod down in 3..2..1....
Re:How will this affect me? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How will this affect me? (Score:3, Interesting)
A couple of buddies of mine just went through a secret subpeona last weekend and believe me it was no picnic for them.
Basically, they were fl
Re:How will this affect me? (Score:5, Insightful)
A) In a SANE world, he'd have been held or released on the basis of his actual infringement (flying through Bush's Secret Magical Zone). Websurfing habits would not come into play because it would have nothing to do with it.
B) How would the judge issue a warrant to get their past websurfing habits? Is this the real secret that Bush is hiding from us? That the NSA employs Timecops? If so why don't they just go back in time and kill my gr
Re:How will this affect me? (Score:5, Informative)
Second most ISPs don't keep logs on your current web traffic, it's simply too much data to keep, most ISPs don't keep router logs more then a week (if they keep them at all, which themselves are useless and can takes hours to match them with DHCP logs and then with websites), DHCP logs are kept for a greater amount of time. Second the FBI doesn't care if you visit the normal anti-GWB websites, they might care if you visited it at the same time as going to Jihad Jim's bomb making HOWTO.
Also none of the pilots have been arrested because violating a TFR is not a crime, it's a regulatory action between the pilot and the FAA. The passengers would not have been effected one bit, since they did nothing wrong.
Re:How will this affect me? (Score:3, Informative)
In a country of 300,000,000 people and a huge number of visitors and "undocumented guests"? When one person could have multiple subpoenas applie
Re:How will this affect me? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're fogetting a few things ...
If each of the 3000 people who was secretly spied on had contact with only 20 people, that's a pool of 60,000 additional people whose privacy was "incidently" violated.
So now they've got, not 3,000, but 63,000 "names of interest."
Take it one level further for each of the additional 60,000 ... 60,000 x 20 = 1,200,000.
It grows pretty fast. The danger is these secret searches escalating into their version of the Kevin Bacon game.
Re:How will this affect me? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How will this affect me? (Score:5, Interesting)
On the tangent a bit, according to some results 100k+ people have died in the last few years thanks to the war in Iraq. Oh, but they weren't roman^Wamerican citizens, so we don't talk about them and it makes it all right, right?
My point is, why the craze about terrorism and not about sufferings caused by actions supposedly taken against terrorism? The answer is simple, currently most of the media runs "managed" news. They don't "censor", just set a very low weight to otherwise important news, that is their biggest power not leaning/bending opinions with words.
Re:How will this affect me? (Score:5, Interesting)
outside of 2001, fewer people have died in America from international terrorism than have drowned in toilets. Hell, if you consider how many people die from eating peanuts each year then it really is them that you should be afraid of...
On a slightly different note, one of the main purpose of terrorism is to generate "advertising" in a lot of circumastances, and I do think that the 9/11 attacks were for this end, being afraid of terrorism, changing what you do in you life is letting the terrorist win; it gives them what they want.
Re:How will this affect me? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well.. to be fair,
Re:How will this affect me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, keep in mind that according to the 9/11 report, that the reason there was no warning was because the bad guys did not use any electronic form of communication.
So, either terrorists are now dumber than they used to be, or the American public is.
Re:How will this affect me? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How will this affect me? (Score:4, Insightful)
"I do normally take the view that if you're not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to fear"
That's a viewpoint I hear all the time, and I must confess that I'm completely mystified by it. Do people who believe this think the government will never abuse it's power? They're abusing their power right now and have many times before -- that's true of almost every government in human hisotry. You'd have nothing to fear when doing nothing wrong only if the government was completely honest. The more power they have the more they'll abuse it, as they keep proving every day. I should think that would be obvious.
Re:How will this affect me? (Score:3, Insightful)
How would they feel if we re-framed it like this: "If you're not doing anything wrong in the bathroom, you shouldn't be worried about the government videotaping you there." ... or ... "If you're not doing anything illegal in
Re:How will this affect me? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How will this affect me? (Score:3, Interesting)
First, as people have stated, the government can think you are doing something wrong even if you aren't, or they can claim you are. Or other people who bear you ill will can "out" you.
Second, what i
Re:How will this affect me? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Is this necessarily a bad thing? (Score:3, Insightful)